Something to think and pray about this week

You can’t lead others if you can’t lead yourself. But you can’t lead others if you use power primarily to serve yourself and your ego. Leadership is not about you, it’s about the rest of us—your family, community, colleagues, or customers.

“Get over yourself” is how we blunt New Yorkers put it. Pope Francis employs a richer concept: “Authentic power is service.” The two phrases encapsulate a paradox of leadership. Leaders must dig deep within themselves, but that inward journey ultimately inspires them to leap beyond the shortsighted horizons that diminish so many leaders, who never see beyond my department, my company, my money, me, me, me.

Good leaders see farther. They feel called to transcend themselves and serve a greater mission than self-interest alone.

To help and guide our prayer this year, we are reflecting on what it means to journey into the wilderness. Throughout the Bible, the wilderness is a place of preparation; a place of overcoming temptation; a place that God leads many people to, including Jesus before he began his public ministry. The retreat will give us an opportunity to reflect on moments of wilderness from the Old and New Testaments, and also the desert places in our own lives. A new session of the retreat will be available each week during Lent.

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